Friday, July 17, 2015

A long-time member and friend, Gregg Wolfersheim, recently loaned us a nice set of pictures of the heroic movement of the ERHS collection from the Downers Grove area to Union in 1973. The history of the Electric Railway Historical Society has already been covered here.

Gregg's pictures are carefully numbered and annotated, so we'll just present them in chronological order with his captions, some of which include details on the trucks used for the move. Enjoy!

These images are copyrighted by the photographer and may not be reproduced without permission.

2 comments:

Anonymous
said...

How many days did all these moves take? It must have been one of the biggest undertakings of IRM, after the move from North Chicago. It would be good to finish the bowling alley. Is there a barn with strong enough trusses to hang it again?

Dennis would know for sure, but I believe the move took a couple of weeks. And I think the work was done mostly by Dennis, Dave Shore, Bill, and Nick. As for IRM's biggest undertaking, the acquisition of most of the East Troy collection involved moving a greater number of cars, and Trolleyville was only slightly smaller, and farther away.

IRM used to organize off-site projects with large numbers of volunteers, something that seldom happens any more. We usually hire contractors instead. Back in the seventies, we organized groups to take up the track from a power plant in South Chicago, then the one in Dixon, and I'm sure there were others I missed. And there was moving the 50th Avenue station, that was a big group project. Those were the days.

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